Soyuz TM-6 was the sixth manned spacecraft to visit the SovietSpace StationMir.[2] It was launched in August 1988, during the station's third long-duration expedition, Mir EO-3. The three-person crew that was launched consisted of Research Doctor Valeri Polyakov, who became part of the EO-3 crew, as well as the two crew members of the week-long mission Mir EP-3, which included the first ever Afghan cosmonaut, Abdul Ahad Mohmand.

On September 8, Soyuz TM-6 was undocked from Mir's Kvant port and redocked onto the Mir Base Block's port.[3] It remained there until December, when it brought Titov and Manarov of the EO-3 crew back to Earth. It also landed French astronaut Jean-Loup Chrétien, ending his week-long spaceflight which started with Soyuz TM-7.

Dr. Valeri Polyakov remained behind on Mir with cosmonauts Musa Manarov and Vladimir Titov when Mohmand and Lyakhov returned to Earth in Soyuz TM-5.

Its crew had a unique makeup, with a commander (Vladimir Lyakhov) who had been trained to fly a Soyuz-TM solo in the event a rescue ship needed to be sent to recover two cosmonauts from Mir, no flight engineer, and two inexperienced cosmonaut-researchers. One was Dr. Valeri Polyakov, who would remain aboard Mir with Titov and Manarov to monitor their health during the final months of their planned year-long stay. The other was Intercosmos cosmonaut Abdul Ahad Mohmand, from Afghanistan.